The Prittlewell Prince

In 2003 archaeologists from the Museum of London excavated a richly-furnished chamber grave at Prittlewell, near Southend in Essex, the first intact Anglo-Saxon princely grave to be excavated since the Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939 . Work to publish this internationally-important find is now nearly complete and the Study Day will present the latest research, interpreting the burial and defining its local and wider contexts.

Provisional Programme

09.50 – 10.15: Coffee on arrival

10.15 – 11.15: The Prittlewell Cemetery – The chamber grave was discovered on the site of a known Anglo-Saxon cemetery. In this session we look at the setting of the site and the finds from the cemetery to establish its immediate physical and social contexts.

11.15 – 11.45: Coffee break

11.45 – 12.45: The Chamber Grave and its Contents – Unusual preservation conditions and meticulous excavation allow us to understand exactly how the body and chamber were laid out and furnished. In this session we look in detail at the burial chamber and the rich assemblage of artefacts that was buried with the deceased.

12.45 – 14.00: Lunch break

14.00 – 15.00: Princely Burials in England – The Prittlewell chamber grave needs to be understood against the wider picture of princely burial in its European context and look at comparable princely graves in England.

15.00 – 15.20: Tea break

15.20 – 16.20: Interpreting the Prittlewell Burial – What does the Prittlewell chamber grave tell us about society and belief in Essex and SE England, and who was buried here? In this session we explore what can be deduced from the burial about the identity of the deceased and the society that chose to bury him in this way.

Chris Scull studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University. After postgraduate research at the Institute of Archaeology in Oxford, he taught archaeology at the Universities of Durham and London before working in contract archaeology. He joined English Heritage in 1993 and was their Research Director between 2005 and 2010. Chris has particular research interests in early medieval burial, and in the emergence of the early English kingdoms. He has published many papers and reports on these and other aspects of early medieval archaeology, including Early medieval cemeteries at Boss Hall and Buttermarket, Ipswich, Suffolk (2009) and the co-authored monograph Anglo-Saxon graves and grave-goods of the 6th and 7th centuries AD: a chronological framework (2013). He is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Department of Archaeology & Conservation, Cardiff University, and at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.

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Summer Programme:

The Court at Sutton Hoo is still closed for the refurbishment works. We had hoped to find other venues to run the Study Days in the interim, however that has not proved possible so we are assuming that the Study Days will restart again in the Court in September. We are planning an exciting set of topics and speakers. Apologies for the long gap.